“Whenever,” he says, “anything happens that requires more than ordinary consideration, or I am out of humour upon any occasion, I still, by Hercules! long for my dear Tiberius; and those lines of Homer frequently occur to my thoughts:”

“When I hear and read that you are much impaired by the (208) continued fatigues you undergo, may the gods confound me if my whole frame does not tremble! So I beg you to spare yourself, lest, if we should hear of your being ill, the news prove fatal both to me and your mother, and the Roman people should be in peril for the safety of the empire. It matters nothing whether I be well or no, if you be not well. I pray heaven preserve you for us, and bless you with health both now and ever, if the gods have any regard for the Roman people.”

XXII. He did not make the death of Augustus public, until he had taken off young Agrippa. He was slain by a tribune who commanded his guard, upon reading a written order for that purpose: respecting which order, it was then a doubt, whether Augustus left it in his last moments, to prevent any occasion of public disturbance after his decease, or Livia issued it, in the name of Augustus; and whether with the knowledge of Tiberius or not. When the tribune came to inform him that he had executed his command, he replied, “I commanded you no such thing, and you must answer for it to the senate;” avoiding, as it seems, the odium of the act for that time. And the affair was soon buried in silence.

XXIII. Having summoned the senate to meet by virtue of his tribunitian authority, and begun a mournful speech, he drew a deep sigh, as if unable to support himself under his affliction; and wishing that not his voice only, but his very breath of life, might fail him, gave his speech to his son Drusus to read. Augustus’s will was then brought in, and read by a freedman; none of the witnesses to it being admitted, but such as were of the senatorian order, the rest owning their hand-writing without doors. The will began thus: “Since my ill-fortune has deprived me of my two sons, Caius and Lucius, let Tiberius Caesar be heir to two-thirds of my estate.” These words countenanced the suspicion of those who were of opinion, that Tiberius was appointed successor more out of necessity than choice, since Augustus could not refrain from prefacing his will in that manner.

XXIV. Though he made no scruple to assume and exercise immediately the imperial authority, by giving orders that he (209) should be attended by the guards, who were the security and badge of the supreme power; yet he affected, by a most impudent piece of acting, to refuse it for a long time; one while sharply reprehending his friends who entreated him to accept it, as little knowing what a monster the government was; another while keeping in suspense the senate, when they implored him and threw themselves at his feet, by ambiguous answers, and a crafty kind of dissimulation; insomuch that some were out of patience, and one cried out, during the confusion, “Either let him accept it, or decline it at once;” and a second told him to his face, “Others are slow to perform what they promise, but you are slow to promise what you actually perform.” At last, as if forced to it, and complaining of the miserable and burdensome service imposed upon him, he accepted the government; not, however, without giving hopes of his resigning it some time or other. The exact words he used were these: “Until the time shall come, when ye may think it reasonable to give some rest to my old age.”

XXV. The cause of his long demur was fear of the dangers which threatened him on all hands; insomuch that he said, “I have got a wolf by the ears.” For a slave of Agrippa’s, Clemens by name, had drawn together a considerable force to revenge his master’s death; Lucius Scribonius Libo, a senator of the first distinction, was secretly fomenting a rebellion; and the troops both in Illyricum and Germany were mutinous. Both armies insisted upon high demands, particularly that their pay should be made equal to that of the pretorian guards. The army in Germany absolutely refused to acknowledge a prince who was not their own choice; and urged, with all possible importunity, Germanicus 329, who commanded them, to take the government on himself, though he obstinately refused it. It was Tiberius’s apprehension from this quarter, which made him request the senate to assign him some part only in the administration, such as they should judge proper, since no man could be sufficient for the whole, without one or more to assist him. He pretended likewise to be in a bad state of health, that Germanicus might the more patiently wait in hopes of speedily succeeding him, or at least of being (210) admitted to be a colleague in the government. When the mutinies in the armies were suppressed, he got Clemens into his hands by stratagem. That he might not begin his reign by an act of severity, he did not call Libo to an account before the senate until his second year, being content, in the mean time, with taking proper precautions for his own security. For upon Libo’s attending a sacrifice amongst the high-priests, instead of the usual knife, he ordered one of lead to be given him; and when he desired a private conference with him, he would not grant his request, but on condition that his son Drusus should be present; and as they walked together, he held him fast by the right hand, under the pretence of leaning upon him, until the conversation was over.

XXVI. When he was delivered from his apprehensions, his behaviour at first was unassuming, and he did not carry himself much above the level of a private person; and of the many and great honours offered him, he accepted but few, and such as were very moderate. His birth-day, which happened to fall at the time of the Plebeian Circensian games, he with difficulty suffered to be honoured with the addition of only a single chariot, drawn by two horses. He forbad temples, flamens, or priests to be appointed for him, as likewise the erection of any statues or effigies for him, without his permission; and this he granted only on condition that they should not be placed amongst the images of the gods, but only amongst the ornaments of houses. He also interposed to prevent the senate from swearing to maintain his acts; and the month of September from being called Tiberius, and October being named after Livia. The praenomen likewise of EMPEROR, with the cognomen of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY, and a civic crown in the vestibule of his house, he would not accept. He never used the name of AUGUSTUS, although he inherited it, in any of his letters, excepting those addressed to kings and princes. Nor had he more than three consulships; one for a few days, another for three months, and a third, during his absence from the city, until the ides [fifteenth] of May.

XXVII. He had such an aversion to flattery, that he would never suffer any senator to approach his litter, as he passed the streets in it, either to pay him a civility, or upon business. (211) And when a man of consular rank, in begging his pardon for some offence he had given him, attempted to fall at his feet, he started from him in such haste, that he stumbled and fell. If any compliment was paid him, either in conversation or a set speech, he would not scruple to interrupt and reprimand the party, and alter what he had said. Being once called “lord,” 330 by some person, he desired that he might no more be affronted in that manner. When another, to excite veneration, called his occupations “sacred,” and a third had expressed himself thus: “By your authority I have waited upon the senate,” he obliged them to change their phrases; in one of them adopting persuasion, instead of “authority,” and in the other, laborious, instead of “sacred.”

XXVIII. He remained unmoved at all the aspersions, scandalous reports, and lampoons, which were spread against him or his relations; declaring, “In a free state, both the tongue and the mind ought to be free.” Upon the senate’s desiring that some notice might be taken of those offences, and the persons charged with them, he replied, “We have not so much time upon our hands, that we ought to involve ourselves in more business. If you once make an opening 331 for such proceedings, you will soon have nothing else to do. All private quarrels will be brought before you under that pretence.” There is also on record another sentence used by him in the senate, which is far from assuming: “If he speaks otherwise of me, I shall take care to behave in such a manner, as to be able to give a good account both of my words and actions; and if he persists, I shall hate him in my turn.”

XXIX. These things were so much the more remarkable in him, because, in the respect he paid to individuals, or the whole body of the senate, he went beyond all bounds. Upon his differing with Quintus Haterius in the senate-house, “Pardon me, sir,” he said, “I beseech you, if I shall, as a senator, speak my mind very freely in opposition to you.” Afterwards, addressing the senate in general, he said: “Conscript Fathers, I have often said it both now and at other times, that a good (212) and useful prince, whom you have invested with so great and absolute power, ought to be a slave to the senate, to the whole body of the people, and often to individuals likewise: nor am I sorry that I have said it. I have always found you good, kind, and indulgent masters, and still find you so.”

XXX. He likewise introduced a certain show of liberty, by preserving to the senate and magistrates their former majesty and power. All affairs, whether of great or small importance, public or private, were laid before the senate. Taxes and monopolies, the erecting or repairing edifices, levying and disbanding soldiers, the disposal of the legions and auxiliary forces in the provinces, the appointment of generals for the management of extraordinary wars, and the answers to letters from foreign princes, were all submitted to the senate. He compelled the commander of a troop of horse, who was accused of robbery attended with violence, to plead his cause before the senate. He never entered the senate-house but unattended; and being once brought thither in a litter, because he was indisposed, he dismissed his attendants at the door.

XXXI. When some decrees were made contrary to his opinion, he did not even make any complaint. And though he thought that no magistrates after their nomination should be allowed to absent themselves from the city, but reside in it constantly, to receive their honours in person, a praetor-elect obtained liberty to depart under the honorary title of a legate at large. Again, when he proposed to the senate, that the Trebians might have leave granted them to divert some money which had been left them by will for the purpose of building a new theatre, to that of making a road, he could not prevail to have the will of the testator set aside. And when, upon a division of the house, he went over to the minority, nobody followed him. All other things of a public nature were likewise transacted by the magistrates, and in the usual forms; the authority of the consuls remaining so great, that some ambassadors from Africa applied to them, and complained, that they could not have their business dispatched by Caesar, to whom they had been sent. And no wonder; since it was observed that he used to rise up as the consuls approached, and give them the way.

(213) XXXII. He reprimanded some persons of consular rank in command of armies, for not writing to the senate an account of their proceedings, and for consulting him about the distribution of military rewards; as if they themselves had not a right to bestow them as they judged proper. He commended a praetor, who, on entering office, revived an old custom of celebrating the memory of his ancestors, in a speech to the people. He attended the corpses of some persons of distinction to the funeral pile. He displayed the same moderation with regard to persons and things of inferior consideration. The magistrates of Rhodes, having dispatched to him a letter on public business, which was not subscribed, he sent for them, and without giving them so much as one harsh word, desired them to subscribe it, and so dismissed them. Diogenes, the grammarian, who used to hold public disquisitions, at Rhodes every sabbath-day, once refused him admittance upon his coming to hear him out of course, and sent him a message by a servant, postponing his admission until the next seventh day. Diogenes afterwards coming to Rome, and waiting at his door to be allowed to pay his respects to him, he sent him word to come again at the end of seven years. To some governors, who advised him to load the provinces with taxes, he answered, “It is the part of a good shepherd to shear, not flay, his sheep.”

XXXIII. He assumed the sovereignty 332 by slow degrees, and exercised it for a long time with great variety of conduct, though generally with a due regard to the public good. At first he only interposed to prevent ill management. Accordingly, he rescinded some decrees of the senate; and when the magistrates sat for the administration of justice, he frequently offered his service as assessor, either taking his place promiscuously amongst them, or seating himself in a corner of the tribunal. If a rumour prevailed, that any person under prosecution was likely to be acquitted by his interest, he would suddenly make his appearance, and from the floor of the court, (214) or the praetor’s bench, remind the judges of the laws, and of their oaths, and the nature of the charge brought before them, he likewise took upon himself the correction of public morals, where they tended to decay, either through neglect, or evil custom.

XXXIV. He reduced the expense of the plays and public spectacles, by diminishing the allowances to actors, and curtailing the number of gladiators. He made grievous complaints to the senate, that the price of Corinthian vessels was become enormous, and that three mullets had been sold for thirty thousand sesterces: upon which he proposed that a new sumptuary law should be enacted; that the butchers and other dealers in viands should be subject to an assize, fixed by the senate yearly; and the aediles commissioned to restrain eating-houses and taverns, so far as not even to permit the sale of any kind of pastry. And to encourage frugality in the public by his own example, he would often, at his solemn feasts, have at his tables victuals which had been served up the day before, and were partly eaten, and half a boar, affirming, “It has all the same good bits that the whole had.” He published an edict against the practice of people’s kissing each other when they met; and would not allow new-year’s gifts 333 to be presented after the calends [the first] of January was passed. He had been in the habit of returning these offerings four-fold, and making them with his own hand; but being annoyed by the continual interruption to which he was exposed during the whole month, by those who had not the opportunity of attending him on the festival, he returned none after that day.

XXXV. Married women guilty of adultery, though not prosecuted publicly, he authorised the nearest relations to punish by agreement among themselves, according to ancient custom. He discharged a Roman knight from the obligation of an oath he had taken, never to turn away his wife; and allowed him to divorce her, upon her being caught in criminal intercourse with her son-in-law. Women of ill-fame, divesting themselves of the rights and dignity of matrons, had now begun a practice of professing themselves prostitutes, to avoid (215) the punishment of the laws; and the most profligate young men of the senatorian and equestrian orders, to secure themselves against a decree of the senate, which prohibited their performing on the stage, or in the amphitheatre, voluntarily subjected themselves to an infamous sentence, by which they were degraded. All those he banished, that none for the future might evade by such artifices the intention and efficacy of the law. He stripped a senator of the broad stripes on his robe, upon information of his having removed to his gardens before the calends [the first] of July, in order that he might afterwards hire a house cheaper in the city. He likewise dismissed another from the office of quaestor, for repudiating, the day after he had been lucky in drawing his lot, a wife whom he had married only the day before.

XXXVI. He suppressed all foreign religions, and the Egyptian 334 and Jewish rites, obliging those who practised that kind of superstition, to burn their vestments, and all their sacred utensils. He distributed the Jewish youths, under the pretence of military service, among the provinces noted for an unhealthy climate; and dismissed from the city all the rest of that nation as well as those who were proselytes to that religion 335, under pain of slavery for life, unless they complied. He also expelled the astrologers; but upon their suing for pardon, and promising to renounce their profession, he revoked his decree.

XXXVII. But, above all things, he was careful to keep the (216) public peace against robbers, burglars, and those who were disaffected to the government. He therefore increased the number of military stations throughout Italy; and formed a camp at Rome for the pretorian cohorts, which, till then, had been quartered in the city. He suppressed with great severity all tumults of the people on their first breaking out; and took every precaution to prevent them. Some persons having been killed in a quarrel which happened in the theatre, he banished the leaders of the parties, and the players about whom the disturbance had arisen; nor could all the entreaties of the people afterwards prevail upon him to recall them 336. The people of Pollentia having refused to permit the removal of the corpse of a centurion of the first rank from the forum, until they had extorted from his heirs a sum of money for a public exhibition of gladiators, he detached a cohort from the city, and another from the kingdom of Cottius 337; who concealing the cause of their march, entered the town by different gates, with their arms suddenly displayed, and trumpets sounding; and having seized the greatest part of the people, and the magistrates, they were imprisoned for life. He abolished every where the privileges of all places of refuge. The Cyzicenians having committed an outrage upon some Romans, he deprived them of the liberty they had obtained for their good services in the Mithridatic war. Disturbances from foreign enemies he quelled by his lieutenants, without ever going against them in person; nor would he even employ his lieutenants, but with much reluctance, and when it was absolutely necessary. Princes who were ill-affected towards him, he kept in subjection, more by menaces and remonstrances, than by force of arms. Some whom he induced to come to him by fair words and promises, he never would permit to return home; as Maraboduus the German, Thrascypolis the (217) Thracian, and Archelaus the Cappadocian, whose kingdom he even reduced into the form of a province.

XXXVIII. He never set foot outside the gates of Rome, for two years together, from the time he assumed the supreme power; and after that period, went no farther from the city than to some of the neighbouring towns; his farthest excursion being to Antium 338, and that but very seldom, and for a few days; though he often gave out that he would visit the provinces and armies, and made preparations for it almost every year, by taking up carriages, and ordering provisions for his retinue in the municipia and colonies. At last he suffered vows to be put up for his good journey and safe return, insomuch that he was called jocosely by the name of Callipides, who is famous in a Greek proverb, for being in a great hurry to go forward, but without ever advancing a cubit.

XXXIX. But after the loss of his two sons, of whom Germanicus died in Syria, and Drusus at Rome, he withdrew into Campania 339; at which time opinion and conversation were almost general, that he never would return, and would die soon. And both nearly turned out to be true. For indeed he never more came to Rome; and a few days after leaving it, when he was at a villa of his called the Cave, near Terracina 340, during supper a great many huge stones fell from above, which killed several of the guests and attendants; but he almost hopelessly escaped.

XL. After he had gone round Campania, and dedicated the capitol at Capua, and a temple to Augustus at Nola 341, which he made the pretext of his journey, he retired to Capri; being (218) greatly delighted with the island, because it was accessible only by a narrow beach, being on all sides surrounded with rugged cliffs, of a stupendous height, and by a deep sea. But immediately, the people of Rome being extremely clamorous for his return, on account of a disaster at Fidenae 342, where upwards of twenty thousand persons had been killed by the fall of the amphitheatre, during a public spectacle of gladiators, he crossed over again to the continent, and gave all people free access to him; so much the more, because, at his departure from the city, he had caused it to be proclaimed that no one should address him, and had declined admitting any persons to his presence, on the journey.

XLI. Returning to the island, he so far abandoned all care of the government, that he never filled up the decuriae of the knights, never changed any military tribunes or prefects, or governors of provinces, and kept Spain and Syria for several years without any consular lieutenants. He likewise suffered Armenia to be seized by the Parthians, Moesia by the Dacians and Sarmatians, and Gaul to be ravaged by the Germans; to the great disgrace, and no less danger, of the empire.

XLII. But having now the advantage of privacy, and being remote from the observation of the people of Rome, he abandoned himself to all the vicious propensities which he had long but imperfectly concealed, and of which I shall here give a particular account from the beginning. While a young soldier in the camp, he was so remarkable for his excessive inclination to wine, that, for Tiberius, they called him Biberius; for Claudius, Caldius; and for Nero, Mero. And after he succeeded to the empire, and was invested with the office of reforming the morality of the people, he spent a whole night and two days together in feasting and drinking with Pomponius Flaccus and Lucius Piso; to one of whom he immediately gave the province of Syria, and to the other the prefecture of the city; declaring them, in his letters-patent, to be “very pleasant companions, and friends fit for all occasions.” He made an appointment to sup with Sestius Gallus, a lewd and prodigal old fellow, who had been disgraced by Augustus, and reprimanded by himself but a few days before in the senate-house; upon condition that he should not recede in the least from his usual method of entertainment, and that they should be attended at table by naked girls. He preferred a very obscure candidate for the quaestorship, before the most noble competitors, only for taking off, in pledging him at table, an amphora of wine at a draught 343. He presented Asellius Sabinus with two hundred thousand sesterces, for writing a dialogue, in the way of dispute, betwixt the truffle and the fig-pecker, the oyster and the thrush. He likewise instituted a new office to administer to his voluptuousness, to which he appointed Titus Caesonius Priscus, a Roman knight.

XLIII. In his retreat at Capri 344, he also contrived an apartment containing couches, and adapted to the secret practice of abominable lewdness, where he entertained companies of girls and catamites, and assembled from all quarters inventors of unnatural copulations, whom he called Spintriae, who defiled one another in his presence, to inflame by the exhibition the languid appetite. He had several chambers set round with pictures and statues in the most lascivious attitudes, and furnished with the books of Elephantis, that none might want a pattern for the execution of any lewd project that was prescribed him. He likewise contrived recesses in woods and groves for the gratification of lust, where young persons of both sexes prostituted themselves in caves and hollow rocks, in the disguise of little Pans and Nymphs 345. So that he was publicly and commonly called, by an abuse of the name of the island, Caprineus. 346

XLIV. But he was still more infamous, if possible, for an (220) abomination not fit to be mentioned or heard, much less credited. 347 —————————When a picture, painted by Parrhasius, in which the artist had represented Atalanta in the act of submitting to Meleager’s lust in a most unnatural way, was bequeathed to him, with this proviso, that if the subject was offensive to him, he might receive in lieu of it a million of sesterces, he not only chose the picture, but hung it up in his bed-chamber. It is also reported that, during a sacrifice, he was so captivated with the form of a youth who held a censer, that, before the religious rites were well over, he took him aside and abused him; as also a brother of his who had been playing the flute; and soon afterwards broke the legs of both of them, for upbraiding one another with their shame.

XLV. How much he was guilty of a most foul intercourse with women even of the first quality 348, appeared very plainly by the death of one Mallonia, who, being brought to his bed, but resolutely refusing to comply with his lust, he gave her up to the common informers. Even when she was upon her trial, he frequently called out to her, and asked her, “Do you repent?” until she, quitting the court, went home, and stabbed herself; openly upbraiding the vile old lecher for his gross obscenity 349. Hence there was an allusion to him in a farce, which was acted at the next public sports, and was received with great applause, and became a common topic of ridicule 350: that the old goat————

XLVI. He was so niggardly and covetous, that he never allowed to his attendants, in his travels and expeditions, any salary, but their diet only. Once, indeed, he treated them liberally, at the instigation of his step-father, when, dividing them into three classes, according to their rank, he gave the (221) first six, the second four, and the third two, hundred thousand sesterces, which last class he called not friends, but Greeks.

XLVII. During the whole time of his government, he never erected any noble edifice; for the only things he did undertake, namely, building the temple of Augustus, and restoring Pompey’s Theatre, he left at last, after many years, unfinished. Nor did he ever entertain the people with public spectacles; and he was seldom present at those which were given by others, lest any thing of that kind should be requested of him; especially after he was obliged to give freedom to the comedian Actius. Having relieved the poverty of a few senators, to avoid further demands, he declared that he should for the future assist none, but those who gave the senate full satisfaction as to the cause of their necessity. Upon this, most of the needy senators, from modesty and shame, declined troubling him. Amongst these was Hortalus, grandson to the celebrated orator Quintus Hortensius, who [marrying], by the persuasion of Augustus, had brought up four children upon a very small estate.

XLVIII. He displayed only two instances of public munificence. One was an offer to lend gratis, for three years, a hundred millions of sesterces to those who wanted to borrow; and the other, when, some large houses being burnt down upon Mount Caelius, he indemnified the owners. To the former of these he was compelled by the clamours of the people, in a great scarcity of money, when he had ratified a decree of the senate obliging all money-lenders to advance two-thirds of their capital on land, and the debtors to pay off at once the same proportion of their debts, and it was found insufficient to remedy the grievance. The other he did to alleviate in some degree the pressure of the times. But his benefaction to the sufferers by fire, he estimated at so high a rate, that he ordered the Caelian Hill to be called, in future, the Augustan. To the soldiery, after doubling the legacy left them by Augustus, he never gave any thing, except a thousand denarii a man to the pretorian guards, for not joining the party of Sejanus; and some presents to the legions in Syria, because they alone had not paid reverence to the effigies of Sejanus among their standards. He seldom gave discharges to the veteran soldiers, calculating (222) on their deaths from advanced age, and on what would be saved by thus getting rid of them, in the way of rewards or pensions. Nor did he ever relieve the provinces by any act of generosity, excepting Asia, where some cities had been destroyed by an earthquake.

XLIX. In the course of a very short time, he turned his mind to sheer robbery. It is certain that Cneius Lentulus, the augur, a man of vast estate, was so terrified and worried by his threats and importunities, that he was obliged to make him his heir; and that Lepida, a lady of a very noble family, was condemned by him, in order to gratify Quirinus, a man of consular rank, extremely rich, and childless, who had divorced her twenty years before, and now charged her with an old design to poison him. Several persons, likewise, of the first distinction in Gaul, Spain, Syria, and Greece, had their estates confiscated upon such despicably trifling and shameless pretences, that against some of them no other charge was preferred, than that they held large sums of ready money as part of their property. Old immunities, the rights of mining, and of levying tolls, were taken from several cities and private persons. And Vonones, king of the Parthians, who had been driven out of his dominions by his own subjects, and fled to Antioch with a vast treasure, claiming the protection of the Roman people, his allies, was treacherously robbed of all his money, and afterwards murdered.

L. He first manifested hatred towards his own relations in the case of his brother Drusus, betraying him by the production of a letter to himself, in which Drusus proposed that Augustus should be forced to restore the public liberty. In course of time, he shewed the same disposition with regard to the rest of his family. So far was he from performing any office of kindness or humanity to his wife, when she was banished, and, by her father’s order, confined to one town, that he forbad her to stir out of the house, or converse with any men. He even wronged her of the dowry given her by her father, and of her yearly allowance, by a quibble of law, because Augustus had made no provision for them on her behalf in his will. Being harassed by his mother, Livia, who claimed an equal share in the government with him, he frequently avoided (223) seeing her, and all long and private conferences with her, lest it should be thought that he was governed by her counsels, which, notwithstanding, he sometimes sought, and was in the habit of adopting. He was much offended at the senate, when they proposed to add to his other titles that of the Son of Livia, as well as Augustus. He, therefore, would not suffer her to be called “the Mother of her Country,” nor to receive any extraordinary public distinction. Nay, he frequently admonished her “not to meddle with weighty affairs, and such as did not suit her sex;” especially when he found her present at a fire which broke out near the Temple of Vesta 351, and encouraging the people and soldiers to use their utmost exertions, as she had been used to do in the time of her husband.

LI. He afterwards proceeded to an open rupture with her, and, as is said, upon this occasion. She having frequently urged him to place among the judges a person who had been made free of the city, he refused her request, unless she would allow it to be inscribed on the roll, “That the appointment had been extorted from him by his mother.” Enraged at this, Livia brought forth from her chapel some letters from Augustus to her, complaining of the sourness and insolence of Tiberius’s temper, and these she read. So much was he offended at these letters having been kept so long, and now produced with so much bitterness against him, that some considered this incident as one of the causes of his going into seclusion, if not the principal reason for his so doing. In the (224) whole years she lived during his retirement, he saw her but once, and that for a few hours only. When she fell sick shortly afterwards, he was quite unconcerned about visiting her in her illness; and when she died, after promising to attend her funeral, he deferred his coming for several days, so that the corpse was in a state of decay and putrefaction before the interment; and he then forbad divine honours being paid to her, pretending that he acted according to her own directions. He likewise annulled her will, and in a short time ruined all her friends and acquaintance; not even sparing those to whom, on her death-bed, she had recommended the care of her funeral, but condemning one of them, a man of equestrian rank, to the treadmill. 352

LII. He entertained no paternal affection either for his own son Drusus, or his adopted son Germanicus. Offended at the vices of the former, who was of a loose disposition and led a dissolute life, he was not much affected at his death; but, almost immediately after the funeral, resumed his attention to business, and prevented the courts from being longer closed. The ambassadors from the people of Ilium coming rather late to offer their condolence, he said to them by way of banter, as if the affair had already faded from his memory, “And I heartily condole with you on the loss of your renowned countryman, Hector.” He so much affected to depreciate Germanicus, that he spoke of his achievements as utterly insignificant, and railed at his most glorious victories as ruinous to the state; complaining of him also to the senate for going to Alexandria without his knowledge, upon occasion of a great and sudden famine at Rome. It was believed that he took care to have him dispatched by Cneius Piso, his lieutenant in Syria. This person was afterwards tried for the murder, and would, as was supposed, have produced his orders, had they not been contained in a private and confidential dispatch. The following words therefore were posted up in many places, and frequently shouted in the night: “Give us back our Germanicus.” This suspicion was afterwards confirmed by the barbarous treatment of his wife and children.

(225) LIII. His daughter-in-law Agrippina, after the death of her husband, complaining upon some occasion with more than ordinary freedom, he took her by the hand, and addressed her in a Greek verse to this effect: “My dear child, do you think yourself injured, because you are not empress?” Nor did he ever vouchsafe to speak to her again. Upon her refusing once at supper to taste some fruit which he presented to her, he declined inviting her to his table, pretending that she in effect charged him with a design to poison her; whereas the whole was a contrivance of his own. He was to offer the fruit, and she to be privately cautioned against eating what would infallibly cause her death. At last, having her accused of intending to flee for refuge to the statue of Augustus, or to the army, he banished her to the island of Pandataria 353. Upon her reviling him for it, he caused a centurion to beat out one of her eyes; and when she resolved to starve herself to death, he ordered her mouth to be forced open, and meat to be crammed down her throat. But she persisting in her resolution, and dying soon afterwards, he persecuted her memory with the basest aspersions, and persuaded the senate to put her birth-day amongst the number of unlucky days in the calendar. He likewise took credit for not having caused her to be strangled and her body cast upon the Gemonian Steps, and suffered a decree of the senate to pass, thanking him for his clemency, and an offering of gold to be made to Jupiter Capitolinus on the occasion.

LIV. He had by Germanicus three grandsons, Nero, Drusus, and Caius; and by his son Drusus one, named Tiberius. Of these, after the loss of his sons, he commended Nero and Drusus, the two eldest sons of Germanicus, to the senate; and at their being solemnly introduced into the forum, distributed money among the people. But when he found that on entering upon the new year they were included in the public vows for his own welfare, he told the senate, “that such honours ought not to be conferred but upon those who had been proved, and were of more advanced years.” By thus betraying his private feelings towards them, he exposed them to all sorts of accusations; and after practising many artifices to provoke (226) them to rail at and abuse him, that he might be furnished with a pretence to destroy them, he charged them with it in a letter to the senate; at the same time accusing them, in the bitterest terms, of the most scandalous vices. Upon their being declared enemies by the senate, he starved them to death; Nero in the island of Ponza, and Drusus in the vaults of the Palatium. It is thought by some, that Nero was driven to a voluntary death by the executioner’s shewing him some halters and hooks, as if he had been sent to him by order of the senate. Drusus, it is said, was so rabid with hunger, that he attempted to eat the chaff with which his mattress was stuffed. The relics of both were so scattered, that it was with difficulty they were collected.

LV. Besides his old friends and intimate acquaintance, he required the assistance of twenty of the most eminent persons in the city, as counsellors in the administration of public affairs. Out of all this number, scarcely two or three escaped the fury of his savage disposition. All the rest he destroyed upon one pretence or another; and among them Aelius Sejanus, whose fall was attended with the ruin of many others. He had advanced this minister to the highest pitch of grandeur, not so much from any real regard for him, as that by his base and sinister contrivances he might ruin the children of Germanicus, and thereby secure the succession to his own grandson by Drusus.

LVI. He treated with no greater leniency the Greeks in his family, even those with whom he was most pleased. Having asked one Zeno, upon his using some far-fetched phrases, “What uncouth dialect is that?” he replied, “The Doric.” For this answer he banished him to Cinara 354, suspecting that he taunted him with his former residence at Rhodes, where the Doric dialect is spoken. It being his custom to start questions at supper, arising out of what he had been reading in the day, and finding that Seleucus, the grammarian, used to inquire of his attendants what authors he was then studying, and so came prepared for his enquiries—he first turned him out of his family, and then drove him to the extremity of laying violent hands upon himself.

(227) LVII. His cruel and sullen temper appeared when he was still a boy; which Theodorus of Gadara 355, his master in rhetoric, first discovered, and expressed by a very apposite simile, calling him sometimes, when he chid him, “Mud mixed with blood.” But his disposition shewed itself still more clearly on his attaining the imperial power, and even in the beginning of his administration, when he was endeavouring to gain the popular favour, by affecting moderation. Upon a funeral passing by, a wag called out to the dead man, “Tell Augustus, that the legacies he bequeathed to the people are not yet paid.” The man being brought before him, he ordered that he should receive what was due to him, and then be led to execution, that he might deliver the message to his father himself. Not long afterwards, when one Pompey, a Roman knight, persisted in his opposition to something he proposed in the senate, he threatened to put him in prison, and told him, “Of a Pompey I shall make a Pompeian of you;” by a bitter kind of pun playing upon the man’s name, and the ill-fortune of his party.

LVIII. About the same time, when the praetor consulted him, whether it was his pleasure that the tribunals should take cognizance of accusations of treason, he replied, “The laws ought to be put in execution;” and he did put them in execution most severely. Some person had taken off the head of Augustus from one of his statues, and replaced it by another 356. The matter was brought before the senate, and because the case was not clear, the witnesses were put to the torture. The party accused being found guilty, and condemned, this kind of proceeding was carried so far, that it became capital for a man to beat his slave, or change his clothes, near the statue of Augustus; to carry his head stamped upon the coin, or cut in the stone of a ring, into a necessary house, or the stews; or to reflect upon anything that had been either said or done by him. In fine, a person was condemned to death, for suffering some honours to be decreed to him in the colony where he lived, upon the same day on which they had formerly been decreed to Augustus.

(228) LIX. He was besides guilty of many barbarous actions, under the pretence of strictness and reformation of manners, but more to gratify his own savage disposition. Some verses were published, which displayed the present calamities of his reign, and anticipated the future. 357

At first he would have it understood, that these satirical verses were drawn forth by the resentment of those who were impatient under the discipline of reformation, rather than that they spoke their real sentiments; and he would frequently say, “Let them hate me, so long as they do but approve my conduct.” 358 At length, however, his behaviour showed that he was sensible they were too well founded.

(229) LX. A few days after his arrival at Capri, a fisherman coming up to him unexpectedly, when he was desirous of privacy, and presenting him with a large mullet, he ordered the man’s face to be scrubbed with the fish; being terrified at the thought of his having been able to creep upon him from the back of the island, over such rugged and steep rocks. The man, while undergoing the punishment, expressing his joy that he had not likewise offered him a large crab which he had also taken, he ordered his face to be farther lacerated with its claws. He put to death one of the pretorian guards, for having stolen a peacock out of his orchard. In one of his journeys, his litter being obstructed by some bushes, he ordered the officer whose duty it was to ride on and examine the road, a centurion of the first cohorts, to be laid on his face upon the ground, and scourged almost to death.

LXI. Soon afterwards, he abandoned himself to every species of cruelty, never wanting occasions of one kind or another, to serve as a pretext. He first fell upon the friends and acquaintance of his mother, then those of his grandsons, and his daughter-in-law, and lastly those of Sejanus; after whose death he became cruel in the extreme. From this it appeared, that he had not been so much instigated by Sejanus, as supplied with occasions of gratifying his savage temper, when he wanted them. Though in a short memoir which he composed of his own life, he had the effrontery to write, “I have punished Sejanus, because I found him bent upon the destruction of the children of my son Germanicus,” one of these he put to death, when he began to suspect Sejanus; and another, after he was taken off. It would be tedious to relate all the numerous instances of his cruelty: suffice it to give a few examples, in their different kinds. Not a day passed without the punishment of some person or other, not excepting holidays, or those appropriated to the worship of the gods. Some were tried even on New-Year’s-Day. Of many who were condemned, their wives and children shared the same fate; and for those who were sentenced to death, the relations were forbid to put on mourning. Considerable rewards were voted for the prosecutors, and sometimes for the witnesses also. The information of any person, without exception, was taken; and all offences were capital, even speaking (230) a few words, though without any ill intention. A poet was charged with abusing Agamemnon; and a historian 359, for calling Brutus and Cassius “the last of the Romans.” The two authors were immediately called to account, and their writings suppressed; though they had been well received some years before, and read in the hearing of Augustus. Some, who were thrown into prison, were not only denied the solace of study, but debarred from all company and conversation. Many persons, when summoned to trial, stabbed themselves at home, to avoid the distress and ignominy of a public condemnation, which they were certain would ensue. Others took poison in the senate house. The wounds were bound up, and all who had not expired, were carried, half-dead, and panting for life, to prison. Those who were put to death, were thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and then dragged into the Tiber. In one day, twenty were treated in this manner; and amongst them women and boys. Because, according to an ancient custom, it was not lawful to strangle virgins, the young girls were first deflowered by the executioner, and afterwards strangled. Those who were desirous to die, were forced to live. For he thought death so slight a punishment, that upon hearing that Carnulius, one of the accused, who was under prosecution, had killed himself, he exclaimed, “Carnulius has escaped me.” In calling over his prisoners, when one of them requested the favour of a speedy death, he replied, “You are not yet restored to favour.” A man of consular rank writes in his annals, that at table, where he himself was present with a large company, he was suddenly asked aloud by a dwarf who stood by amongst the buffoons, why Paconius, who was under a prosecution for treason, lived so long. Tiberius immediately reprimanded him for his pertness; but wrote to the senate a few days after, to proceed without delay to the punishment of Paconius.

LXII. Exasperated by information he received respecting the death of his son Drusus, he carried his cruelty still farther. He imagined that he had died of a disease occasioned (231) by his intemperance; but finding that he had been poisoned by the contrivance of his wife Livilla 360 and Sejanus, he spared no one from torture and death. He was so entirely occupied with the examination of this affair, for whole days together, that, upon being informed that the person in whose house he had lodged at Rhodes, and whom he had by a friendly letter invited to Rome, was arrived, he ordered him immediately to be put to the torture, as a party concerned in the enquiry. Upon finding his mistake, he commanded him to be put to death, that he might not publish the injury done him. The place of execution is still shown at Capri, where he ordered those who were condemned to die, after long and exquisite tortures, to be thrown, before his eyes, from a precipice into the sea. There a party of soldiers belonging to the fleet waited for them, and broke their bones with poles and oars, lest they should have any life left in them. Among various kinds of torture invented by him, one was, to induce people to drink a large quantity of wine, and then to tie up their members with harp-strings, thus tormenting them at once by the tightness of the ligature, and the stoppage of their urine. Had not death prevented him, and Thrasyllus, designedly, as some say, prevailed with him to defer some of his cruelties, in hopes of longer life, it is believed that he would have destroyed many more: and not have spared even the rest of his grandchildren: for he was jealous of Caius, and hated Tiberius as having been conceived in adultery. This conjecture is indeed highly probable; for he used often to say, “Happy Priam, who survived all his children!” 361

LXIII. Amidst these enormities, in how much fear and apprehension, as well as odium and detestation, he lived, is evident from many indications. He forbade the soothsayers to be consulted in private, and without some witnesses being present. He attempted to suppress the oracles in the neighbourhood of the city; but being terrified by the divine authority of the (232) Praenestine Lots 362, he abandoned the design. For though they were sealed up in a box, and carried to home, yet they were not to be found in it, until it was returned to the temple. More than one person of consular rank, appointed governors of provinces, he never ventured to dismiss to their respective destinations, but kept them until several years after, when he nominated their successors, while they still remained present with him. In the meantime, they bore the title of their office; and he frequently gave them orders, which they took care to have executed by their deputies and assistants.

LXIV. He never removed his daughter-in-law, or grandsons 363, after their condemnation, to any place, but in fetters and in a covered litter, with a guard to hinder all who met them on the road, and travellers, from stopping to gaze at them.

LXV. After Sejanus had plotted against him, though he saw that his birth-day was solemnly kept by the public, and divine honours paid to golden images of him in every quarter, yet it was with difficulty at last, and more by artifice than his imperial power, that he accomplished his death. In the first place, to remove him from about his person, under the pretext of doing him honour, he made him his colleague in his fifth consulship; which, although then absent from the city, he took upon him for that purpose, long after his preceding consulship. Then, having flattered him with the hope of an alliance by marriage with one of his own kindred, and the prospect of the tribunitian authority, he suddenly, while Sejanus little expected it, charged him with treason, in an abject and pitiful address to the senate; in which, among other things, he begged them “to send one of the consuls, to conduct himself, a poor solitary old man, with a guard of soldiers, into their presence.” Still distrustful, however, and apprehensive of an insurrection, he ordered his grandson, Drusus, whom he still kept in confinement at Rome, to be set at liberty, and if occasion required, to head the troops. He had likewise ships in readiness to transport him to any of the legions to which he might consider it expedient to make his escape. Meanwhile, he was upon the (233) watch, from the summit of a lofty cliff, for the signals which he had ordered to be made if any thing occurred, lest the messengers should be tardy. Even when he had quite foiled the conspiracy of Sejanus, he was still haunted as much as ever with fears and apprehensions, insomuch that he never once stirred out of the Villa Jovis for nine months after.

LXVI. To the extreme anxiety of mind which he now experienced, he had the mortification to find superadded the most poignant reproaches from all quarters. Those who were condemned to die, heaped upon him the most opprobrious language in his presence, or by hand-bills scattered in the senators’ seats in the theatre. These produced different effects: sometimes he wished, out of shame, to have all smothered and concealed; at other times he would disregard what was said, and publish it himself. To this accumulation of scandal and open sarcasm, there is to be subjoined a letter from Artabanus, king of the Parthians, in which he upbraids him with his parricides, murders, cowardice, and lewdness, and advises him to satisfy the furious rage of his own people, which he had so justly excited, by putting an end to his life without delay.

LXVII. At last, being quite weary of himself, he acknowledged his extreme misery, in a letter to the senate, which begun thus: “What to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write at this time, may all the gods and goddesses pour upon my head a more terrible vengeance than that under which I feel myself daily sinking, if I can tell.” Some are of opinion that he had a foreknowledge of those things, from his skill in the science of divination, and perceived long before what misery and infamy would at last come upon him; and that for this reason, at the beginning of his reign, he had absolutely refused the title of the “Father of his Country,” and the proposal of the senate to swear to his acts; lest he should afterwards, to his greater shame, be found unequal to such extraordinary honours. This, indeed, may be justly inferred from the speeches which he made upon both those occasions; as when he says, “I shall ever be the same, and shall never change my conduct, so long as I retain my senses; but to avoid giving a bad precedent to posterity, the senate ought to beware of binding themselves to the acts of (234) any person whatever, who might by some accident or other be induced to alter them.” And again: “If ye should at any time entertain a jealousy of my conduct, and my entire affection for you, which heaven prevent by putting a period to my days, rather than I should live to see such an alteration in your opinion of me, the title of Father will add no honour to me, but be a reproach to you, for your rashness in conferring it upon me, or inconstancy in altering your opinion of me.”

LXVIII. In person he was large and robust; of a stature somewhat above the common size; broad in the shoulders and chest, and proportionable in the rest of his frame. He used his left hand more readily and with more force than his right; and his joints were so strong, that he could bore a fresh, sound apple through with his finger, and wound the head of a boy, or even a young man, with a fillip. He was of a fair complexion, and wore his hair so long behind, that it covered his neck, which was observed to be a mark of distinction affected by the family. He had a handsome face, but it was often full of pimples. His eyes, which were large, had a wonderful faculty of seeing in the night-time, and in the dark, for a short time only, and immediately after awaking from sleep; but they soon grew dim again. He walked with his neck stiff and upright: generally with a frowning countenance, being for the most part silent: when he spoke to those about him, it was very slowly, and usually accompanied with a slight gesticulation of his fingers. All which, being repulsive habits and signs of arrogance, were remarked by Augustus, who often endeavoured to excuse them to the senate and people, declaring that “they were natural defects, which proceeded from no viciousness of mind.” He enjoyed a good state of health, without interruption, almost during the whole period of his rule; though, from the thirtieth year of his age, he treated it himself according to his own discretion, without any medical assistance.

LXIX. In regard to the gods, and matters of religion, he discovered much indifference; being greatly addicted to astrology, and fully persuaded that all things were governed by fate. Yet he was extremely afraid of lightning, and when the sky was in a disturbed state, always wore a laurel crown on his head; because it is supposed that the leaf of that tree is never touched by the lightning.

(235) LXX. He applied himself with great diligence to the liberal arts, both Greek and Latin. In his Latin style, he affected to imitate Messala Corvinus 364, a venerable man, to whom he had paid much respect in his own early years. But he rendered his style obscure by excessive affectation and abstruseness, so that he was thought to speak better extempore, than in a premeditated discourse. He composed likewise a lyric ode, under the title of “A Lamentation upon the death of Lucius Caesar;” and also some Greek poems, in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius 365. These poets he greatly admired, and placed their works and statues in the public libraries, amongst the eminent authors of antiquity. On this account, most of the learned men of the time vied with each other in publishing observations upon them, which they addressed to him. His principal study, however, was the history of the fabulous ages, inquiring even into its trifling details in a ridiculous manner; for he used to try the grammarians, a class of men which, as I have already observed, he much affected, with such questions as these: “Who was Hecuba’s mother? What name did Achilles assume among the virgins? What was it that the Sirens used to sing?” And the first day that he entered the senate-house, after the death of Augustus, as if he intended to pay respect at once to his father’s memory and to the gods, he made an offering of frankincense and wine, but without any music, in imitation of Minos, upon the death of his son.

LXXI. Though he was ready and conversant with the Greek tongue, yet he did not use it everywhere; but chiefly he avoided it in the senate-house, insomuch that having occasion to employ the word monopolium (monopoly), he first begged pardon for being obliged to adopt a foreign word. And when, in a decree of the senate, the word emblaema (emblem) was read, he proposed to have it changed, and that a Latin word should be substituted in its room; or, if no proper one could be found, to express the thing by circumlocution. A soldier (236) who was examined as a witness upon a trial, in Greek 366, he would not allow to reply, except in Latin.

LXXII. During the whole time of his seclusion at Capri, twice only he made an effort to visit Rome. Once he came in a galley as far as the gardens near the Naumachia, but placed guards along the banks of the Tiber, to keep off all who should offer to come to meet him. The second time he travelled on the Appian Way 367, as far as the seventh mile-stone from the city, but he immediately returned, without entering it, having only taken a view of the walls at a distance. For what reason he did not disembark in his first excursion, is uncertain; but in the last, he was deterred from entering the city by a prodigy. He was in the habit of diverting himself with a snake, and upon going to feed it with his own hand, according to custom, he found it devoured by ants: from which he was advised to beware of the fury of the mob. On this account, returning in all haste to Campania, he fell ill at Astura 368; but recovering a little, went on to Circeii 369. And to obviate any suspicion of his being in a bad state of health, he was not only present at the sports in the camp, but encountered, with javelins, a wild boar, which was let loose in the arena. Being immediately seized with a pain in the side, and catching cold upon his over-heating himself in the exercise, he relapsed into a worse condition than he was before. He held out, however, for some time; and sailing as far as Misenum 370, omitted nothing (237) in his usual mode of life, not even in his entertainments, and other gratifications, partly from an ungovernable appetite, and partly to conceal his condition. For Charicles, a physician, having obtained leave of absence, on his rising from table, took his hand to kiss it; upon which Tiberius, supposing he did it to feel his pulse, desired him to stay and resume his place, and continued the entertainment longer than usual. Nor did he omit his usual custom of taking his station in the centre of the apartment, a lictor standing by him, while he took leave of each of the party by name.

LXXIII. Meanwhile, finding, upon looking over the acts of the senate, “that some person under prosecution had been discharged, without being brought to a hearing,” for he had only written cursorily that they had been denounced by an informer; he complained in a great rage that he was treated with contempt, and resolved at all hazards to return to Capri; not daring to attempt any thing until he found himself in a place of security. But being detained by storms, and the increasing violence of his disorder, he died shortly afterwards, at a villa formerly belonging to Lucullus, in the seventy-eighth year of his age 371, and the twenty-third of his reign, upon the seventeenth of the calends of April (16th March), in the consulship of Cneius Acerronius Proculus and Caius Pontius Niger. Some think that a slow-consuming poison was given him by Caius 372. Others say that during the interval of the intermittent fever with which he happened to be seized, upon asking for food, it was denied him. Others report, that he was stifled by a pillow thrown upon him 373, when, on his recovering from a swoon, he called for his ring, which had been taken from him in the fit. Seneca writes, “That finding himself dying, he took his signet ring off his finger, and held it a while, as if he would deliver it to somebody; but put it again upon his finger, and lay for some time, with his left hand clenched, and without stirring; when suddenly summoning his attendants, (238) and no one answering the call, he rose; but his strength failing him, he fell down at a short distance from his bed.”

LXXIV. Upon his last birth-day, he had brought a full-sized statue of the Timenian Apollo from Syracuse, a work of exquisite art, intending to place it in the library of the new temple 374; but he dreamt that the god appeared to him in the night, and assured him “that his statue could not be erected by him.” A few days before he died, the Pharos at Capri was thrown down by an earthquake. And at Misenum, some embers and live coals, which were brought in to warm his apartment, went out, and after being quite cold, burst out into a flame again towards evening, and continued burning very brightly for several hours.

LXXV. The people were so much elated at his death, that when they first heard the news, they ran up and down the city, some crying out, “Away with Tiberius to the Tiber;” others exclaiming, “May the earth, the common mother of mankind, and the infernal gods, allow him no abode in death, but amongst the wicked.” Others threatened his body with the hook and the Gemonian stairs, their indignation at his former cruelty being increased by a recent atrocity. It had been provided by an act of the senate, that the execution of condemned criminals should always be deferred until the tenth day after the sentence. Now this fell on the very day when the news of Tiberius’s death arrived, and in consequence of which the unhappy men implored a reprieve, for mercy’s sake; but, as Caius had not yet arrived, and there was no one else to whom application could be made on their behalf, their guards, apprehensive of violating the law, strangled them, and threw them down the Gemonian stairs. This roused the people to a still greater abhorrence of the tyrant’s memory, since his cruelty continued in use even after he was dead. As soon as his corpse was begun to be moved from Misenum, many cried out for its being carried to Atella 375, and being half burnt there (239) in the amphitheatre. It was, however, brought to Rome, and burnt with the usual ceremony.

LXXVI. He had made about two years before, duplicates of his will, one written by his own hand, and the other by that of one of his freedmen; and both were witnessed by some persons of very mean rank. He appointed his two grandsons, Caius by Germanicus, and Tiberius by Drusus, joint heirs to his estate; and upon the death of one of them, the other was to inherit the whole. He gave likewise many legacies; amongst which were bequests to the Vestal Virgins, to all the soldiers, and each one of the people of Rome, and to the magistrates of the several quarters of the city.